Alright, so this was initially supposed to be a random thread that I usually go on about on Twitter, but it kind of spiraled out of control characters wise and decided to turn it into a whole blog post. If you prefer these extrapolated thoughts more than the usual relatively short threads on twitter, please let me know.

So why we are bothering with 1/1 art? How does one approach the 1/1 art market as a collector? wen utility? (Alright, that last question is outside the scope of this post). I’m going to be diving a bit deeper in my own thought process and factors of being a 1/1 collector and why (in my opinion) some people may be glancing over or fading them in favor of being short-term sighted. I’m going to be speaking mostly from my own personal experience and behavior with a splash of an investing/profit seeking perspective and not buying “Art you like” as that is pretty self-explanatory. I may deviate here and there from the main point but hope I can tie it all together in the end.

Most topics covered here are from a broad and very subjective perspective. The last couple of points in specific are what I’d call them “risks” to be undertaking while navigating through the 1/1 market, so hopefully I’ll be able to explain both sides equally.

Disclaimer: Please remember that everything mentioned here is from my own subjective point of view and basically nothing is backed up by data or charts from my side. So if you were looking for numbers to back up my opinion, then I’d like to apologize in advance for disappointing you.

While outliers exist, most artists prefer (or in most cases obligated) to start in 1/1. This is due to the fact, they are new to the space, not connected well enough with bigger members in this space or just plain out playing it safe before putting their name out there to thousands or tens of thousands of potential investors and potentially get judged and criticized from the get-go.

So what does have to do with you as a collector? Good news is that most of the NFT volume right now is concentrated around collectibles and PFPs. This is where most of your homework, as a collector, starts. You get to browse at your leisure their previous work, and previous accomplishments without having to constantly checking floor prices. Use the lack hype for the 1/1 market to your advantage to do some proper research. One thing I find myself slacking in doing is visiting other prominent collectors galleries on Oncyber and other platforms. If you are new to the space and don’t know where to start, these galleries are an amazing starting point!

For the most part, I think it’s alright to diversify your interests in genres here and there a bit, but I think it’s far more valuable to strengthen your knowledge and develop your roots in a certain community whether it was photography, anime…etc. Doesn’t mean you can’t make friends with other artists from a different community, always keep an open mind to when it comes to art and 1/1 as you really don’t know what will randomly hits you from a certain genre and finding yourself going down deep in the rabbit hole.

Now you probably heard about provenance before in the traditional art world. What? You didn’t?! Well, no worries, I’m here to give you the summarized version of it without having you to google it. So it’s about the history and timeline of the artwork piece itself, who has it been with, who minted it and which smart contract, did the artist use a centralized smart contract deployer or did he utilize something like Manifold to create his own.

These kind of information, when put together, can help you paint a better picture for the history of the artwork and verify it’s legitimacy. I wouldn’t say there’s the perfect path and options to evaluate a piece but it’s something to keep in mind, especially there’s a lot of fake mints, copies, right click saves attempts (yes, that’s a thing and not just a meme). So even after a few years down the line, it can help you trace back the originality of the 1/1 back to the original creator if you happen to stumble a certain piece. Or maybe you can evaluate the piece based on who has collected that art before as maybe you look for a certain individual(s) stamp of approval since they decided to collect it in the first place. All these kind of amazing and public information are at your disposal to help you decide!

We have done a Twitter Spaces deep dive session back in December 2021 regarding that subject including: Robek, lmposter, Radiosolace, GreyRadian and hosted by the amazing Icki! Feel free to give the recording (Thanks Salt for the recording!) a listen if you are interested in learning more about it.

“Time is of the essence”

You probably heard the saying before, and if you have done the PFPs and collectibles cycles, pretty sure you can multiply the importance of that saying by a 100 when the NFT bull market is in full swing.

However, being late in terms of a being 1/1 collector doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things as your outlook is potentially 6+ months on a semi fast trajectory and could be years if you are looking at a higher time-frames. Whereas in a PFP project, being late a month or so could be the difference between early with life changing money to turning into outside of your budget potentially permanently (e.g Azuki).

While some mints and drops from certain artists could develop some kind of FOMO once you develop a liking to a certain artwork and genre, I find myself a lot more laid back as time passes being in this market, so I think it should be normal to you as well once you cement yourself properly within this space.

You can argue that some mainstream artists who are anticipated or eager to join the NFT space (e.g Naoki Saito) might be on the radar of some prominent collectors. But for the most part, it’s not much of an “alpha” (in my opinion) as people would like to think it is and it usually becomes public information or gets announced by the artists themselves very early to their 1/1 genesis mint.

This one is purely from personal experience, but I feel like you get to know the artist relatively well through the 1/1 work vs if you discover them through a PFP project. An obvious reason would be is that they’d having a bit more time on their hands compared to their “obligations” in a PFP project. If you wanted to get the artist more, getting to know them prior to their breakout sale is your best bet.

So you are kinda in a win-win situation here, if you get to know them early and see if you “vibe” with the artist and their work, you could potentially be onto something here and ride their success along with them. If you didn’t, I’m assuming your decision can be easily made that way and the only thing left to evaluate is whether you like the art or not. From my own experience and behavior and ideal circumstances, I’d like to have both the artist’s personality and their art to be accepted as a collector as it doesn’t have to be one or the other, having both “rules” met makes your conviction a lot more stronger compared to just one of them.

By the way, I’m not telling you to become a sociopath with a checklist of pre-requisite criteria for an artist to meet. Take your time with it and make it happen naturally, I’m calling it “vibe” for a reason you know.

Being stuck in a single PFP project limits your exposure and networking capabilities with other artists and collectors, and if your argument is “Well, I’m in a dozen projects and not just a single one”, then I hate to break it to you but it doesn’t make your argument even better.

As I’ve mentioned previously when getting to know the artists, most of the collectors’ and artists thoughts aren’t being shared in a random project’s discords where there’s a 1000 message/minute. And for someone who has been in multiple projects’ discord channel, I just end up being in the ones where I’m already comfortable (Which are very few) in and chat with the different artists and collectors alike more easily and get to discuss…well...art!

As you interact, engage and collect 1/1, you’d get introduced to potentially similar (or totally different) artists that you may like their work by both collectors and artists alike. As much as people like to think 1/1 collecting is a PVP game like PFPs, it really isn’t for the most part as usually there’s enough for everyone, from my perspective at least.

This might be me just fanboying here, but this to me the best thing about 1/1 art in my opinion. If we’re heading into the Weeb3 (yes, Weeb3) Renaissance, what’s fun about it if we don’t make some friends along the way, eh?

Artists’ competition is fiercer in a way that some of them may challenge themselves even stronger to bring more value to the collectors compared to the next artist. Yes, PFP projects do attempt it of course, but you could see the distinction after months and maybe a year before you start to see this clearly due to the size of the project and challenges they undertake, albeit some projects may progress a lot faster should they get backed/invested by big corporation, but anyways, that’s besides the point I’m trying to make here.

Artists will fight for your attention just as much as PFP projects does with the hype announcements with their own mini-hype innovations. As I’ve mentioned in a previous tweet about the stamps meta, these kind of innovations are what spark those hype cycles among a certain genre, that alone could be a catalyst for such artist to push themselves to another boundary that would sufficiently distinguish themselves from the others.

So, is it all about the stamp meta now then till the end of time? Probably not, but I’d like to think the artists always try to bring value to their OG collectors first as those who believed in them before anyone did, and when talking about stamps, you can think of them as a catapult to price discovery territory, which could ultimately benefit you as an OG collector even if you aren’t going after the stamps yourself. By having more bid activity for the artist ==> more exposure for the artist ==> more collectors discover the artist ==> “Number go up”. Pretty cool dynamics, eh?

This is just one recent example of what’s possible in this space, I just wanted to display how the recent “stamp fever” could play out in a simplified manner. You have to be on the lookout and see what they are innovating sparks an interest and you get to decide who wins eventually with your wallet.

Now flipping to the other side of the coin. No, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies unfortunately, so you must take these factors into account as well before you read the first half of my post and just ape in the first 1/1 artist you see.

While that’s true and you probably won’t buy “The hottest thing on the market” right now to flip it in a month, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a constant inflow of collectors in this space that may share the same passion for the artwork you collected a year+ ago and might make you an offer you can’t refuse.

But since the general rule of buying NFT says “Buy something you like because it could be ultimately worth zero”, it’s better to adopt that mindset first prior to approaching the “investor” mindset with the pointers I’ve highlighted so far.

Yes, you are going to be illiquid for a while, and you’ll have to develop the stomach for it till you love it (just when you were forced to eat your vegetables from your parents as a child). That’s why it’s important not to just yolo your liquidity into 1/1 unless you know there are collectors hovering around the artist’s work at least. Even with other collectors being around, that’s not very guaranteed as secondary markets for 1/1 art are usually very dry.

This is what I meant when your time-horizon should be around 6+ months on average or ideally a year at least. So plan your budget accordingly while taking into account your liquidity in those coming months and potentially years ahead.

Artist could potentially “rug” their collectors if they suddenly disappear and there isn’t much you do about it. Now it doesn’t mean that you should be looking at an artist who’s going to be active till the end of the time, they all got lives you know.

Now as per my knowledge, I don’t recall any mainstream artist who has effectively announced quitting NFTs and their work suddenly went berserk with trading volume activity. So take that as good news, as it’s still undiscovered territory we still don’t know and very early and how “induced scarcity” will affect certain artist’s artwork value. But if traditional art sales are anything to go by, collectors are still paying millions of dollars for artists who’s been dead for 500+ years so make of that what you will.

Another point regarding that subject is that I hate to be the guy saying this as it makes me sounds like a jerk, but it makes a lot of difference if NFTs is a side gig/hobby for the artist vs being all-in as one of the factors I’d want to look at. The mental stability that another job or income sources provides for the artist could potentially be bad for you as an investor as you don’t know what’s going on in their mind right now. They could be looking at that one big sale and call it quits or been just aiming to get a couple of ETHs.

Having the artist’s back against the wall could be a great motivator for some while for others, it could be a source of immeasurable stress level that they wouldn’t want to be having. So at this point, each the artists should be evaluating their own mental capacity and whether or not they want to be in that position eventually.

Note to my fellow artists reading this: This isn’t a call for you to dump your fulltime jobs and become full-time NFT artists just so you satisfy a random thought I’ve wrote. I wouldn’t look at being at NFTs full time without having at least a 2-year savings cushion to have that sweet peace of mind.

As a final remark, one piece of advice I’d give to future or new 1/1 collectors is that you should treat the artists (especially those who you buy their work) as your friends than an investment or an investment opportunity, especially after connecting with them. While it’s good to end up profiting from your investment at the end if you decided sell the artwork eventually, don’t forget that at the end, you are dealing with a human being and not a random cryptocurrency and don’t get too frustrated about it if your “investment” didn’t pay off the end.